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Story: The story of Neon Genesis Evangelion is fairly basic and
cliché on the surface. Beings called “Angels” appear in Tokyo for
the first time after an apocalyptic event called The Second Impact
happened 15 years earlier, causing mayhem, destruction and havoc.
It’s up to a secret organization called ‘NERV’ to fight them off with
giant mechas called Evas. To further the cliché, only teenagers are
able to pilot the Evas. This is as much as the average viewer will
be able to see or understand from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Add
to this the monster of the week format and the characters being too
‘whiny’ and those same average viewers will automatically call it the
most overrated and worst anime to date without comprehending
a single concept about it. When you actually dig deeper into
Neon Genesis Evangelion you will find yourself speculating
a million different things about it. That’s one of its charms, a
speculative, complex and experimental storyline with its major use of
symbolisms, allusions, allegories, psychological and occult
themes which actually makes the viewers think about the anime
more than usual. No other anime was able to do this as much
or pull it off nearly as well as Neon Genesis Evangelion didsorry Serial Experiments Lain and several other brilliant anime. This
inadvertently led to it being one of the most renowned anime
in the world due to people speculating and making theories
about it years after it finished. I can’t say that this is best way
to tell a story since it will feel incoherent and inconsistent to
most as an overall narrative, especially if you are not willing
to search or come up with the answers on your own. A double
edged sword within itself.
The overall flow of the story was quite alright. Despite the repetitive
monster of the week
format, it was able to center around the characters very well and built
up its complicated
themes as it progressed in a proper manner with the battles against the Angels using a lot of
strategy and actual thought behind them. The dialogues were quite mature and complicated to
add to all this. The first half had complexity and maturity when the situation called for it and
lightheartedness when it needed to also. It had a perfect blend of both for the most part. The
second half, however, deviated from this and became far darker and even more complex,
doing away with the lightheartedness. The overall world setting and elements are
well displayed throughout the series and play into the story quite well. The problem
with the pacing though would have to be the overall duration of the series. It needed to
be expanded far more and make things clearer for those not willing enough to figure
anything out on their own. This can be excused though, due to the budget running low
by the end of the series, which brings me to the controversial conclusion of the series
and the movie ‘The End of Evangelion’.
The ending of the series left a sour taste and a lot of
outrage with majority of the fans but being the anomaly that I
am, I quite liked it, loved it even. Deciding to end off by delving
into the characters minds was symbolically representative of
Hideaki Anno’s psychological state during his depression. I
give props to that because it shows how much of a personal
work Neon Genesis Evangelion was to him unlike the fancatering bullocks we get by the dozens these days being
called ‘great’ anime.
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Anime Reign | Issue 2 | 2013